Merchants sell goods and services (collectively referred to herein as “products”) to consumers. The merchants can often control the form of their product offers, the timing of their product offers, and the price at which the products will be offered. The merchant may sell products at a brick-and-mortar sales location, a virtual online site, or both.
Discounts have been used as part of some retail strategies. Discount techniques include providing coupons and rebates to potential consumers, but these techniques have several disadvantages. In this regard, a number of deficiencies and problems associated with the systems used to, among other things, provide discounts to consumers have been identified. Initial registration and setup to allow a merchant to provide promotions using a promotion system is typically a lengthy and involved process. This process may include separate steps by representatives of a promotion and marketing service to verify that a user who wishes to create a promotion is an authorized representative of the merchant, and that promotion offers prepared by the merchant are valid and likely to be of interest to consumers. The hands-on nature of the promotion generation process means that the process is not scalable as the number of merchants accessing the system increases, since each merchant must interact with a staff member of the promotion and marketing service for verification, promotion generation, and various other steps in the process. As more and more merchants join the system, more and more staff members are required to meet the needs of these merchants in a reasonable time frame.
Through applied effort, ingenuity, and innovation, many of these identified problems have been solved by developing solutions that are included in embodiments of the present invention, many examples of which are described in detail herein.